Unforgivable Oversight

In the middle of the information vortex of the massive (in)communication
means of this sur/realistic country [Argentina], in its majority property of
multinational companies, accomplices of the barbarism imposed by neoliberal
capitalism since 1989, the news of the 71st birthday (November 28th) of Gato Barbieri
went absolutely unnoticed.

This was a tremendous injustice for an artist who could serve as an example
to thousands of young people by his exceptional artistic trajectory over the
last 50 years. He actively participated at the end of '50s and the beginning of
the '60s in the jazz scene of our country [Argentina], distinguishing himself
although without erasing the prejudice that touched jazz at that time (a
serious sin affecting several generations of Argentine jazz artists, which he was
actually fortunate to overcome).

His trip to Europe and soon after to the USA allowed him to discover the
horizon without the limits of "free" [jazz] and it allowed him to continue
maturing his own artistic project, which was lamentably interrupted by the actions of
the Peronist organization Triple A first, and then later by the military
genocides (1974-'76).

Gato is a pioneer who left Argentina to lay the foundations, for more than 30
years, of the creative music that today touches this country and a good part
of Latin America. The reinterpretations that he did of Argentine and Latin
American folkloric music and the tango sound as fresh today as they did then, as
one can verify by listening to his extraordinary albums from the late '60s and
early 1970s: The Third World, Fenix, Bolivia, Under
Fire, The Pampero, Yesterdays, El Gato, Chapter 1:
Latin America, Chapter 2: Hasta Siempre, Chapter 3: Viva
Emiliano Zapata, and Chapter 4: Alive in New York.

It is not risky to say that, along with Astor Piazzolla and Dino Saluzzi,
Gato Barbieri represents the best that this country has contributed to the world
in the field of creative music.